What are you doing on New Year’s Eve?
It’s the question people are asking at the moment. And there’s much on offer. There are parties, communal firework displays, dee-jays down the pub, meeting old friends at the local, or simply staying in the watch Hootenanny on TV… Everyone seems to be making plans.
Not me. At the risk of coming across all curmudgeonly (again), I have no plans. Because I loathe New Year’s Eve. Even having no plans is something I hate!
It’s not that I haven’t tried to be sociable and to enjoy it. Over the years, I’ve booked theatre performances and seasonal musicals, but they’ve all ended around 10pm, leaving a couple of hours to fill. That has meant hanging on to the bitter end, staring at a glass of something I didn’t really want until the chimes ring out. And then there’s getting home in the cold/wet/wind (delete as appropriate, or, as more likely, all three). Where’s the celebration in any of that?
Much the same applies with New Year parties. Assuming they’ve not run out of steam by 11pm (and if those invited have children or pets, chances are it’ll be lucky to have lasted that long), there’s that feeling of hanging on until you can turn on the TV and watch the countdown, Big Ben and the fireworks. Standing around a TV, glass of Prosecco in hand, wearing a torn party hat is not my definition of fun.
There’s always the option of staying at home, of course, for a quiet family New Year. Except the TV diet is predictable and tedious, old films and dismal Christmas Specials and end of the year quizzes, and they all leads to fake bonhomie and celebration in a studio with people you don’t know or had forgotten about, as they wait for the countdown. But you know that is not really happening on New Year’s Eve, but was recorded in the summer, and that after they’ve cheered as ‘midnight’ is reached, they’ll be off into bright sun and down to sun loungers or the beach.
And wherever you are, however you choose to spend the dying hours of the old year, the nadir is the actual counting down the last ten seconds, followed by cheering and clinking glasses as the clock strikes twelve, the inevitable recitation of Auld Lang’s Syne, and the kissing and hugging and interlinking of arms of people you don’t know and would steer clear of any other time of the year.
Then, before it’s all over, there’s more chinking of glasses, before there begins more sober reflection on the future; of hoping the new year’s better than the one just ended.
And what’s to follow? A depressing void that drags through the long winter months until spring returns to bring signs of real hope and optimism.
It hasn’t always been January 1st. The artifice that we have created for our New Year used not to be fixed but was set by traditions based on astrological or agricultural events. For the ancient Egyptians, the new year began with the annual flooding of the Nile and the rising of the star Sirius, while for the ancient Chinese, the new year began with the second new moon after the winter solstice. It was only when the calendar we now use was created that January 1 was nominated as New Year’s Day. But it could be any day.
And that’s how I see it. All the cheerfulness, reflection, planning and resolution should not be pinned to one event, one day. It could and should be every day. ‘Today is the first day of the rest of your life,’ is a cliched expression, but that doesn’t make it any less true. We can enjoy all the things we parcel up on one night in December on any night in the year. Perhaps it’s convenient that we all do it together and at the same time. But better, surely, to keep those thoughts, plans, hopes and neighbourliness for every day, not just once a year.
But what are you doing for New Year? Got any plans? Want to go down the pub? Yes, I know, it’s been a terrible year. Let’s hope for better in 2026…
Step into Syd Price's journey.
"Made for Walking" is captivating, moving, and hilarious — sometimes all at once. Grab your copy and find out why.
Buy on Amazon
Want to go down the pub you say???
Very kind Richard!! Happy New Year…..